COMPOST: THE OPEN BIN (COMPOSTING KNOWLEDGE)
Collective-driven, process-based performative exhibitionary project COMPOST: THE OPEN BIN
11.03- 12.06 2022
@ OnCurating Project Space
Zurich, CH
For documenta fifteen (2022), Jakarta-based collective and lead artistic directors ruangrupa initiated an international collaborative network for alternative knowledge production and sharing named the “Composting Knowledge” network (Färgfabriken, GAP Tokyo, ICA Sofia, JJ and Donkey Mill Art Center, Knowbotiqs , Myvillages, YCAR Toronto). ruangrupa’s “Composting Knowledge” stands for an ongoing experiment to imagine alternative terrains for knowledge production and sharing, in collaboration with ruruHaus in Kassel and a wide range of institutions, initiatives, practices, collectives, and individuals around the world. The idea is to foster possible supporting systems for institutions to cooperate and engage in critical ways, by exploring questions and challenges from different perspectives, practices, traditions, and backgrounds.
Following the process-based and communal methodologies proposed by ruangrupa, we will gather our own “open bin” from 10 March (100 days before the start of documenta fifteen) at the OnCurating Project Space in Zurich. With our “COMPOST – the Open Bin”, various activities will come into contact, ideas will be displayed, discussed, and digested, a shared process will be activated, and a space of transition will emerge. We understand “Composting” not only as a natural process, a direct-contact transformation process of digestion/fermentation/composting, but also persist on composting as a cultural and political articulation, of ways self-sustaining, of reflecting upon epistemologies, creating new formations of joyful resistance.
This exhibitionary project – a sequential, choreographed series of interlocking events – will invite diverse artists and groups to come together with the intention of exploring different practices and sharing communal moments. The program will take place for 100 days, from 10 March to 16 June 2022, bringing artistic and curatorial practices from artists, as well as partners of the “Compost Network” of ruangrupa and other peers. The various formats – social in nature – will include screenings, dinners, roundtables, exhibitions, performances, and talks. It will be open and accessible in a hybrid format for its whole duration.
“Composting is growing. It’s a process that calls for a change in our understanding of the subject of knowledge, an uncontrolled mutation of ingredients, which transcend a cartesian or logical system in the production of experiences, and facts but instead, transform every material collected in fertile soil for our community. As the water is part of every living being and a primal, juicy engine for the rotting activity, so the compostable transformation is nourished by every idea, intervention, activity, and contribution by withdrawing from disciplines and one-sided knowledge and expertise forms. Each person is welcome to participate as a cultivator, contributing with awareness to a multi-ingredients compostable practice. The material for a florid mixture is brought from friends, those guests, one-time visitors, students, and researchers, from all corners of the globe, each one will be a grower and harvester of an abundant, yet non-definable knowledge pot. For the shared growth of yet unknown knowledgeable terrains we invite you to contribute to this compost pot.” –Giulia Rossini and Tyuki Imamura on behalf of Compost Network
Organised by: Ronald Kolb, Camille Regli, Dorothee Richter
Curatorial team:
Nadine Bajek, Chiara Borgonovo, Rosela del Bosque, Giulia Busetti, Valeria Brücker, Sophie Brunner, Marina Donina, Olena Iegorova, Erika Giulietti, Sofia Gkinko, Ronald Kolb, Anna Konstantinova, Ronny Koren, Camille Regli, Dorothee Richter, Alexandra Romy, Anita Rosenberger, Smadar Samson, Regina Tetens, Lotte van Ermengem, Anna Wälli
Images: Rosela del Bosque
